Family Wears Red Lipstick To Support 9-Year-Old Male Cousin Who Loves Makeup

Diksha Bijlani, a 22-year-old woman from India, would do anything to support her 9-year-old cousin whom she fondly refers to as “Little Cuz” — and that includes getting her other relatives to wear lipstick. Diksha explained that her male cousin had recently been bullied by some of his immediate family members for taking an interest in makeup, so she decided to do something about it.

“[My aunt] had this mini lipstick that she was discarding but Little Cuz saw it and asked for it, so she gifted it to him!” she told POPSUGAR. “He quickly applied it, but then someone in the room said, ‘Are you trying to be a chakka (transgender)?’ He didn’t even understand what that meant. But the same person started teasing him and then he hid under the bed and wiped off his lips because he’s afraid that we are all mad at him for wearing it.”

My cousin, 9, is the most “effeminate” in the house. Let’s call him Little Cuz. Loves to paint nails, wear lipcolour, learn home science! But in this stereotypical alpha male-centric household he’s often the pivot of jokes. Today he applied lipcolour & got called a “chakka” (1/n) pic.twitter.com/mZ2FplPNyP

In such a house it takes constant work as elder cousins to undo the conditioned gender binary,normalise gender neutral acts which are deemed feminine. So we all wore lip color to make him comfortable & accepted. He felt a specially empowered when he saw my brother wearing it(3/n) pic.twitter.com/aixXrfMpbw

Bijlani told CNN that when Little Cuz saw her brother Geet Bijlani wearing red lipstick he began to feel more confident. “He peeped out and saw my brother wearing it and smiled,” Bijlani said. “He saw me clicking [sic] my brother with it and the cousins around us clapping. So, he slowly slid out from under the bed and posed for us, too. His comfort meter went up slowly with time.”

My brother gave up any toxic masculinity & complied to influence Little Cuz. Little Cuz came out & smiled comfortable in his skin.So important to realise that we owe the responsibility of giving every younger kid a safe space to embrace his place within the gender spectrum(4/n) pic.twitter.com/d9ffsJbsTa